Gun Review: Smith & Wesson Governor Take 2

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RF recently reviewed the Smith & Wesson Governor. Unfortunately, our Fearless Leader lives in a part of the world where shooting inanimate objects requires a court order and direct supervision by a Plinking Safety Officer. RF suspected that the Governor had a hidden forte: shooting stuff. So he sent Smith’s Black Beauty to Arkansas for my “dining and dancing pleasure.”The star of the show: the watermelon PDX’ed into red misty oblivion. I think watermelons are more spectacular than cantaloupes because they don’t have a seed cavity right in the middle and because they contain so much water. Water doesn’t compress very well, and has to go somewhere when a stack of metal disks and pellets slam into it at high velocity. But wait! There’s more . . .

Prior to splattering and splashing the landscape with our interesting targets, we fired preliminary test shots on some rather ordinary plastic jugs full of water. I didn’t bother with pics, but what I saw prefigured the video-worthy destruction to come.

With .410 bird shot, the jugs sort of jiggled a little, and began leaking water out of dozens of tiny holes. Underwhelming would be more than a fair description. And that pattern held true for most things we shot with the bird shot.

Both .45 Long Colt and .45 ACP produced pretty much identical results. With both, the jug jolted some, and then burbled water out of the big entry and exit holes. A little better than the birdshot, but not much. I used the pistol rounds mostly in a post-veggie-apocalypse cleanup role.

When I tried Federal’s .410 self-defense buckshot load, the jug splattered most satisfactorily. But the big show came from  Winchester’s PDX self-defense, containing a stack of 3 plated disks stacked on top of 12 BB pellets. The jug lifted off the old railroad tie and water flew everywhere, even getting my toes wet.

Based on that test, we used the PDX loads for the most dramatic targets, and added in a little Federal buckshot here and there. I used .410 bird shot on the smaller produce and some hand-thrown clay birds.

PDX cut a two-liter generic cola in half. I’m not kidding. See the pic with the video? In half. I peeled the label off the bottle hoping that would enhance the splatter factor. But I had no idea the bottle would end up in two pieces. That eye-popping result pegged our giggle meters.

The lineup of canned veggies from our collective childhood nightmares splattered impressively under the hammer blows of PDX. Check out how much sliced beet juice got on my shorts and shirt. My wife said I even had a glob of it in my moustache.

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Mrs. Hill has repeatedly stated she doesn’t want to appear on video, but she did shoot a couple of things herself…the two-liter strawberry soda which surprised her with a big splash all over her legs from seven yards away, and the cantaloupe, which showed an impressive PDX cavity, but failed to provide the fruity explosion we had hoped.

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The buckshot and bird shot salad disappointed us a little,  especially the bird shot course. The buckshot’s forte proved to be the pressurized cans. All the shaving cream erupted most impressively under blasts of buckshot, at least when I could stop chuckling long enough to actually aim.

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The bird shot proved most useful in shooting the clay birds (Duh!). This video is the very first time I ever tried clays with a shotshell revolver, and I can’t believe I actually hit four of out six. The Governor’s crisp single-action trigger and big honkin’ white dot front sight (that also glows green in the dark!)  made it easy.

The can of TREET flew up and over the berm, and I didn’t want to go down into the snake-infested undergrowth to retrieve it, but I could still see that the damage wrought was most impressive. (In case you aren’t familiar, think of TREET as a low-rent cousin of Spam, made out of chicken along with pork)

We finished off our box of PDX on the other pressurized targets–the spray paint, the air freshener, the cheap canned sodas and the silly string.

One note on Silly String. This is not the first can of Silly String we’ve shot, and we were both quite disappointed in the resulting video. The still photo shows why any shotshell is a poor choice for a can of silly string. The PDX created multiple simultaneous holes in the can, allowing the pressure to escape too easily and preventing the contents from spewing out in a big string. Use a rifle or a handgun with a single projectile on Silly String.

After we put the camera up, I continued to shoot the Governor. I put lots of holes in the cauliflower and onion and cabbage with .45 Long Colt, and even ran a little .45 ACP, but none of the results were impressive enough to warrant screen time. I also broke some more clay birds with the .410 birdshot.

This was the most enjoyable project I’ve done for TTAG thus far. RF was right: the Governor is a hoot. Forget self-defense, or snakes. Shooting stuff is the best reason to own a Smith & Wesson Governor. In fact, after all that glorious destruction, I really, really needed a cigarette. And I don’t smoke cigarettes.

DISCLAIMER: Do not attempt the shots you see in these videos and photos, especially not at a public range, or somewhere you don’t have express permission to make a real mess. All targets were shot on my private property. Both shooter and camera operator wore ear and eye protection at all times. And yes, we cleaned it all up afterwards. So . . . the deeds are done.